Merry Christmas!

Wishing you all a blessed and joyous Christmas!

Under Construction--Waldorf Doll

Greetings! I don't have time to write a long post but thought I'd show you what I've been working on--he's a Christmas present for my son, who recently noticed that his sisters have a lot of dolls and announced that he needed a boy doll. I'm using a Waldorf doll kit from Magic Cabin. I still need to figure out how to do his hair and sew him some clothing. The hair involves some sort of a crocheted cap. Unfortunately I don't crochet, so I am hoping that my 10-year-old craft wizard will bail me out. How's that for role reversal?!

Peanut Brittle

Peanut brittle-making is becoming a yearly tradition in our house. It's quick, easy, and so yummy! I'm not sure about the legality of posting recipes on the Internet, so I'll just link you to the recipe we used here. (It's from Betty Crocker). The thing that looks like an egg in my hand is a thermometer. You don't have to have a thermometer, but it definitely helps.

The finished product, below. It looked like this for about 5 minutes before little fingers started breaking off chunks to taste. And it only lasted that long because it was too hot to handle before that!

It's here!

Winter, that is. Isn't it beautiful?!

Note the tracks in the snow...the kids are having a blast!

Noteworthy Net News

Find out your connection to mountaintop removal here. Is your power company using coal mined in this way? My power company wasn't listed, so I've emailed them to find out.

Here's a New York Times article by Eric Schlosser, of Fast Food Nation fame. Excerpt:

The migrant farm workers who harvest tomatoes in South Florida have one of the nation’s most backbreaking jobs. For 10 to 12 hours a day, they pick tomatoes by hand, earning a piece-rate of about 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket. During a typical day each migrant picks, carries and unloads two tons of tomatoes. For their efforts, this holiday season many of them are about to get a 40 percent pay cut.

Sound Science is Killing Us by one of my favorite agrarian authors, Joel Salatin. Excerpt:

Only government food is safe food. Sound science dictates what is safe. No other standard will do. Only T-bone steaks wrapped in million-dollar, agriculturally prohibited, quintuple-permitted, government-sanctioned processing facilities are fit for human consumption. I can’t buy a pound cake from a neighbor girl who whipped it up and baked it in the family kitchen. That’s not safe. Sound science has thus decreed.

But Coca-Cola is safe. McDonald’s Happy Meals are safe. So is irradiated food. Genetic engineering is the darling of sound science. And until just a couple of months ago, sound science decreed that feeding brains and spinal cords to herbivores was state-of-the-art technology. Now the denizens of the ivory towers are debating whether or not to eliminate the feeding of chicken manure and dead chicken carcasses to herbivores. Rest assured, when the edict comes down from the powers that be, it will be based on sound science.

Rickets is on the rise among American kids. Excerpt:

Too little milk, sunshine and exercise: It's an anti-bone trifecta. And for some kids, shockingly, it's leading to rickets, the soft-bone scourge of the 19th century.